Friday, May 20, 2005

The best first two hundred bars in music history!

Something strange that's been going on for nearly two years: One of my favorite classical works is the Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 by Georges Enescu. If you get a chance to hear this piece, please do -- it's basically nothing more than twelve minutes of one Romanian folk tune after another; as an exercise in form it's not much, but as an exercise in sheer exuberance it's almost unmatched.

The strange thing, though, is that at least once a month I will be driving someplace and as soon as I'm within two minutes of my destination, Buffalo's classical station will cue up the Romanian Rhapsody #1. So invariably, I only get to hear the first two minutes of the thing, which puts me in this mood that won't disappear until I get home and listen to the entire work on CD. It's almost like that episode of South Park when Cartman can't hear the first verse of the Styx song "Come Sail Away" that he doesn't immediately have to sing the whole thing.

Yes, this happened today, on my in to work. I listened to the piece this afternoon when I got home.

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